DIGHTON — Students encountered a pair of Bristol Aggie graduates, one human and the other reptilian, as they freed a batch of rare turtles.

A small greenhouse type structure on the campus of Bristol County Agricultural School shelters thriving populations of several endangered Bay State turtle species.

Those turtles hatch, reach adolescence and are freed periodically in an attempt to boost the threatened species’ wild populations.

Sophomore Natural Resources Management students at Bristol Aggie recently completed a nine-month component of a project created to help ensure the survival of one rare Massachusetts reptile, the Blanding’s turtle, according to department Chairman Brian Bastarache.

“The NRM students have been head-starting 92 hatchling Blanding’s turtles, Emydoidea blandingii, since the beginning of this school year,” he said.

“Head-starting” refers to “raising young animals in captivity until past their most vulnerable stage.”

“The average hatchling weighed only eight grams when U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel delivered them to Bristol Aggie in September,” Bastarache said.

Each turtle gets its own unique sequence of small notches carved into the edge of its shell, and each sequence of notches represents a recorded number.

The identification allows students and biologists to identify individual turtles, according to Bastarache.

“The NRM students weigh and measure all of the head-starts weekly and track the growth of every individual,” he explained. “Individual identification is essential so that the turtles’ progress may be tracked through time, both during the head-starting process and after release.”

Students enter turtle data into an online spreadsheet, instantly available to all cooperating research partners.

During the school year, students feed and clean the turtle habitats at Bristol Aggie. The turtles eat a commercially-produced diet and a specially formulated “turtle gelatine” made fresh on campus.

“Blanding’s turtles hatchlings in the Bristol Aggie Rare Turtle Head-Start Program have exhibited a 96 percent average survival rate and 500 percent average growth (in weight) over the past three years,” Bastarache said.

Aggie students weighed and measured their Blanding’s turtles for the final time on May 21. Then the next day they met up with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Dr. Stephanie Koch at the Assabet National Wildlife Refuge in Sudbury.

Bastarache said that Jared Green and Patty Levasseur, both working with the Fish and Wildlife Service, explained the techniques and technology used to track the released turtles and determine their survival rates.

Levasseur is a Bristol Aggie NRM program graduate.

“It was especially satisfying to watch her teaching the students who are now where she once was,” Bastarache said. “Several of the NRM sophomores remarked that they now looked up to her and that, ‘She is cool.’”

Page 2 of 2 - Students also had the chance to meet another Aggie graduate: Blanding’s turtle 3342.

“The NRM students found a little evidence of their own just before leaving the refuge,” Bastarache said. “A juvenile Blanding’s turtle was found by some of the students.”

Faded, now barely-visible notches identified the reptile as turtle 3342.

“Our records indicated that it was released by the first group of Bristol Aggie NRM students who participated in this research,” Bastarache said. “None of us had seen this turtle since May 21, 2010, when it weighed only 25.6 grams. It looked to be in wonderful condition and now weighs 257 grams.”

Aggie NRM students have now released 461 Blanding’s turtles since 2010.